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More than 15,000 Judicial Branch employees apparently are exempt from Governor David Paterson's temporary pay freeze (here). The Albany Times Union reported Tuesday that pay checks of most nonjudicial employees will be fattened with 4 percent... Read More

hile a relatively small number of taxpayers are shouldering the lion's share of the federal, state and city income tax burden, everyone will soon be footing a bigger bill for rising government spending. Nicole explains... Read More

City Comptroller John Liu was asked at a Crain's NY Breakfast last week whether he would favor shifting future municipal employees from a defined-benefit pension system to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution system. His reply, according to Crain's Insider... Read More

... this week, but what the state did with the money it reaped during the bubble(s). Factoids: Between 1993, the year (roughly) before the tech boom started, and 2007, the last year of the credit bubble, New York State personal-income tax collections... Read More

Unions not surprisingly don't like salary freezes, which are increasingly popular with elected officials as the New York state, its municipalities and school districts struggle with red ink. Freezing wages, union officials argue, violates... Read More

Saying "the state has run out of money," Governor David Paterson is withholding scheduled 4 percent raises for 137,500 state employees until the Legislature enacts a state budget that closes a $9 billion budget gap. Judging from budget developments, state workers may have to wait.. Read More

School districts that freeze employee salaries would get more state aid under a plan being considered by Albany lawmakers. This, of course, would require unions representing... Read More

Patrick M. Regan, a political science professor at Binghamton University, says his union--United University Professions--should agree to forgo 4 percent pay raises in July. In a op-ed in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, Regan writes... Read More

Would the "comprehensive reforms" unveiled today by the state Senate's Majority Democrats "fix the state’s broken budget process and give New Yorkers a fiscally responsible budget," as they claim? Of course not. There are, however, some good ideas... Read More

That's the provocative title of a Working Paper newly posted on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The answer, in a word, is "yes." The co-authors of the paper, which focuses on strikes by nurses in New York between 1984... Read More

Support for some kind of wage freeze (state, local, school district or all public employees) is growing as shown by newspaper editorials in recent weeks (here) and (here). In the past few days, additional editorials weighing in on the topic... Read More

Unless there's surprise development, state workers will get pay checks in mid-April that are fattened with 4 percent salary increases--despite Governor Paterson's call for shared sacrifice. As Daily News columnist Bill Hammond writes () Read More